So if the USA defaults August 2nd, what will happen?

[McNinja]

My plan to balance the federal budget:

1) Eliminate corporate welfare. All of it.
2) Cut the salaries of all senators, congressmen, representatives, the president, etc. by 50%.
3) Pull out of Iraq and Afghanastan (sp?).
4) Cut the defense budget by 15%.

1) Can't
2) Too large. As much as I hate Congress and can't fathom what the president could possibly be doing, there are other things besides a salary that the President and Congress get. They have additional funds for almost all expenses, plus private jets. Take away their jets. Make them ride coach for the next year, and cut the Presidents salary by a third, and his expense budget by another third. Also, turn his quarters in Air Force One into the coach section of Southwest Airlines.
3) Not that simple. Never has been. The troops in Iraq are being completely pulled out by 2013 (I think). Afghanistan is completely different, because we actually have the Taliban to fight against and prevent their re-rise to power. But yes. Pull out of Iraq with the least amount of casualties.
4) Nah. Pull the plug on those couple dozen extra government funded programs. Seriously, if you're going to spend money on defense, just buy a hammer for $50,000 or a toilet seat or $30,000. Don't have a couple dozen copies of other programs in place just because DARPA needs funding and the Social Security fund is out of money (thanks for raiding that, Congress. It's good to have no money with which to play our retirees with).

They just need to cut spending. A lot. And stop buying new 300 million dollar jets every three seconds.

 

[spartan231490]

I haven't gotten a clear answer from anyone, it ranges from "It won't be so bad" to "Apocalyptic" can someone explain exactly what's gonna happen?

ugh... I really hate our Dumb and Dumber two party system... Free election my ass.

It is free, you can vote for anyone you want, you can even write in.

OT: Not much really happens right on August 2, we won't even default our debts. Some international credit agencies will downgrade our credit, which isn't very important because the individual people and countries we borrow from determine how much to lend us at what price, so the rating is mostly artificial. On august 15, we have a big payment on our debt due, if we haven't raised the ceiling by then, we will default, and that will likely have a huge impact, making it much harder for us to borrow money than it is now. Meaning it will be more expensive to borrow money, so we can't borrow as much.

Back to August 2, I kinda lied, there will be major impacts but they will only indirectly hit the country a whole. The big thing that will happen is that the government won't be able to pay a lot of it's bills. GI bills for colleges will go unpaid, federal workers will probably no longer receive pay checks, medicare/medicaid/welfare/social security could go unpaid. All kinds of federal aid programs would stop dead in their tracks. This means that a lot of people will suddenly find it more difficult to buy food, pay rent, get health care, ect. There will likely be riots, very very big ones, before the end of the week.

Even worse than that, the economy will take major hits. Just the argument has caused businesses to stop hiring, if they default then lay-offs will probably run rampant. Worse, the value of the dollar will plummet, killing savings accounts and causing prices to raise. In the current economic situation, I'm sure you can imagine how devastating rising prices and a decreasing dollar value would be to most people. Notice that most politicians will be fine because they not only have lots of money, but they have private jets and friends overseas that will let them stay there if the riots get too bad.

Edit: Yes, i have researched this a lot over the last few weeks. Fun fact: In June when they said the unemployment rate was 9.2%, if you calculate unemployment the way it was calculated in 1980, which counted discouraged workers, it ends up being 22.7% Almost 1 out of every 4 American workers are out of a job.

 

[HerbertTheHamster]

Republicans will complain.

 

[likalaruku]

Man, I read this half asleep yesterday & responded as if you had asked "what if the 2ed amendment defaults," lol.

 

[EvilPicnic]

First world nations can't default. Stop listening to the fear-mongering bullshit that a certain part of your media likes to propagate.
If the USA was even close to defaulting, they'd raise taxes, cut spending or, you know, just move out of Iraq.

amen!

EDIT... better extend that else i'll cop the ban hammer again... =.=..

The debt ceiling is an arbitrary number that can be changed whenever it's needed. Go watch Zeitgeist Addendum for a clearer understanding of how the monetary system works.

I'm sorry. You're saying "amen" to the 'media's fear-mongering bullshit', and then advising people to go watch Zeitgeist Addendum? That is some messed up backwards shit.

It's obscene that the US is sleep-walking into an avoidable default when the Eurozone is battling so hard (and failing) to stay afloat. This affects us all, globally. The politicians should be fucking ashamed.

 

[razerdoh]

if the US defaults they will be kicked out of the very exclusive Triple-A Club.

Only those countries that are green colored are AAA rated: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/World_countries_by_Standard_%26_Poor%27s_ratings.png

 

[Saucycarpdog]

We've done it! We can all breath a sigh of relief.....for now.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43949638/ns/politics-capitol_hill/?gt1=43001

 

[Thedayrecker]

I say we don't raise the debt ceiling, and fuck anybody that tells us to pay our bills, with our massive bloated army. /sarcasm

EDIT:

We've done it! We can all breath a sigh of relief.....for now.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43949638/ns/politics-capitol_hill/?gt1=43001

Damn! There's still a chance something could go wrong, and then my fuck people with missiles and bullets plan could be put to work. /sarcasm still

 

[Khada]

First world nations can't default. Stop listening to the fear-mongering bullshit that a certain part of your media likes to propagate.
If the USA was even close to defaulting, they'd raise taxes, cut spending or, you know, just move out of Iraq.

amen!

EDIT... better extend that else i'll cop the ban hammer again... =.=..

The debt ceiling is an arbitrary number that can be changed whenever it's needed. Go watch Zeitgeist Addendum for a clearer understanding of how the monetary system works.

I'm sorry. You're saying "amen" to the 'media's fear-mongering bullshit', and then advising people to go watch Zeitgeist Addendum? That is some messed up backwards shit.

It's obscene that the US is sleep-walking into an avoidable default when the Eurozone is battling so hard (and failing) to stay afloat. This affects us all, globally. The politicians should be fucking ashamed.

Not really, it's just a declaration of affirmation. Yes it's been largely adopted by religious groups but they don't own it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amen

 

[RoonMian]

We've all seen what determined German armies can do. I for one would be more comfortable with them on my team.

That was the past. The Bundeswehr (today's German army) is a completely defensive army. Tactics, strategies and equipment, all have the only goal of entrenchment. That was one of the conditions of rearming Germany after WWII.

The German hunter-submarines are the quietest in the world (especially the new ones with the fuel cells) and make american aircraftcarrier captains crap their pants whenever there is a joint NATO-maneuver. But we only have a few of them and they are very small as the strategy behind them is operating close to their home bases because the whole german navy is just for defending our coast and maybe blocking off the baltic sea. We don't have a real attack chopper like the Apache, no air-superiorty fighter like that shiny new F22, no invasion troops like the Marines. Instead we have BO-105 Anti-Tank-Choppers operating in packs, the Tornado (a bomber which main characteristic is being able to get away from any other aircraft in low altitude flight) and we had conscription until a few months ago which means about one third of the male population has at least basic military training. All only good for defending our own turf which makes sense since from a Cold-War point of view WWIII would have been fought right here at the iron courtain. There was a thread here a few days ago about which country would be the hardest to invade and my guess is that today's Germany would rank very high on that list.

And above all the "Basic Law" which acts as our constitution prohibits Germany to offensively fight a war against another country.

So we really couldn't invade a hippie community

 

[Nouw]

People will come to New Zealand >

Australia maybe. The Australian dollar is worth more than the NZ and US both.

Not sure why being worth more than NZ is news, since it was always like that.[sub]One day we'll beat you damn it xD[/sub] Aaah well, it has been improving for us Kiwis.

 

[MoNKeyYy]

Let's just hope Canada wakes up and boots Harper sooner than later as he seems to read from the same playbook as the Republiscans.

NOTE:The rules of the internet state that every post in a thread decreases in relevance to the original topic

I'd just like to point out that during the 2008 budget debate Harper was getting tonnes of flak from every other party for "Not using the surplus money for the benefit of Canadians". Layton in particular was critisizing him using the money to pay off debt instead of putting it into other projects. When the global recession hit that year Harper was holding a big WHO'S IRRESPONSIBLE NOW BITCHES Sign over his head while Canada sat securely on top of the 'Most Stable Economy' list.

All due to the financial policies adopted by the previous (ie Liberal) governemtn. During that time, if Harper had his way, Canada would surely be in the same mess as the U.S.A. Or did you not follow his plans while he was leader of opposition?

I was nine when Harper was opposition leader, so I've only really seen actions from Paul Martin and Jean Cretien during that period; I've never really seen what Harper did. But then, the only thing I've seen from Harper during his tenure as opposition leader that would have fucked us over was his push to participate in the Iraq invasion. When he was elected by the newly formed Conservative party it was on top of a platform to move the party further to the center. I'd also just briefly like to say that while I can't talk about OL Harper from 2002/03 with any kind of confidence, modern Harper is definately not a Republican. Hell I think Jon Stewart even said after harper was elected "Congradulations to Canada's Stephen Harper and his Conservative party for their revent election win. Of course conservative there means Ultra-Pinko-Commie-Gay-Liberal party here, but hey conservative is conservative!"

 

[AlexNora]

currency isn't real so a whatever trillion dollar dept = nothing

id recommend investing in gold, silver, blah blah blah... if you do you will be fine

 

[McNinja]

-snip-

Besides which, you're not cutting enough to balance the budget. We borrow 40% of our total annual operating budget. That's 1.5 trillion dollars. The wars cost a little less than 200 billion. 15% of the military budget is less than 150 billion. Now corporate welfare is tricky because it's disguised as tax cuts and exemptions. What you're really talking about is an increase in corporate taxes, and I'm with you on that. Let's double it. That'll increase revenues almost 350 billion. I like the way you're thinking, but cutting the salaries of elected officials isn't really going to save even 1 billion, so for our purposes it's a negligible cut. McNinja, sorry. We can't stop buying those $50,000 toilet seats. That's not government waste. That's how we hide expenditures to stuff we don't want people to know about like the CIA and Area 51. Besides, we've already addressed military spending.

So... ad it all together... You've cut 700 billion. Actually less. I tended to estimate expenditures high. But even so, you didn't quite get us halfway there. Any other suggestions?

I meant we should keep buying those $50,000 toilet seats instead of having a billion multiples of the same govt-funded program.